


the way thirst holds water

by Tippet



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7313068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tippet/pseuds/Tippet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony kisses Steve on a day when the sky is a vivid and cloudless bowl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Tony kisses Steve on a day when the sky is a vivid and cloudless bowl.

They're holding back an armada of metal arthropods in the Lower East Side when Steve misjudges a flight path and his shield careens out of the way, leaving him defenseless. A metal body slams into him and his body may as well be made of cardboard for all the good the serum does him; he has time to think that his body is literally being pulverized as he goes down. He feels a rib break, and then another. He is coughing blood. His vision swims before it starts going dark around the edges.

When the arthropod lifts into the air, Steve scrambles and his limbs fight for purchase on the broken concrete. A bone in his leg trembles, then cracks; a yell ricochets behind clamped lips, tearing at the lining of his throat. When he swallows hard, a coppery taste lingers on his tongue.

Then Tony is there and Steve’s chest fills with near-delirious relief; his body wilts where it lies as he forces his vision to focus. Tony is a red blur that hurtles through, carving a path through the wreckage. A metal scream rips through the air and Steve catches a glimpse of the repulsor beam slicing through before he closes his eyes, trying to remember how to breathe around the liquid in his lungs. He can’t remember the last time he’s been in such all-pervasive pain; it pounds at him like a sledgehammer now, fresh waves breaking through with every pulse.

He feels rather than sees Tony land next to him and disengage the suit. The armor cracks apart and crashes to the ground in pieces. Then, Tony’s hands are running over his body, probing for injuries. Steve registers somewhere in the back of his mind that Tony is being as gentle as he can, and the thought forces his eyes open. Tony is crackling electric, eyes wild as he stares at Steve. A spectacular bruise purples most of one cheek and Tony has bloodied his lip. Destruction blazes behind him; Steve thinks he can see Thor and Bruce in the distance tackling the flagship.

“Are you okay?” Tony demands, words pouring from him fast and low-pitched. “Can you get up? Your ribs are broken. Your left femur too. And maybe your arm. On second thought, scratch that, don’t get up. I’ve got a couple of medi-bots on the way. Don’t move.”

Steve nods shakily, shutting his eyes again. “Okay,” he gasps.

Tony takes a ragged, broken-sounding breath and swears. Steve wonders if he’s been injured too and is about to ask—then, a shadow falls across his face and the air is suddenly full of the cologne Tony douses himself with every morning.

Tony kisses him, fevered and sharp and arrogant. It is a kiss that suits Tony.

Steve’s eyes fly open; he reels back in surprise and succeeds in lodging a couple more shards of concrete into the back of his head. He is imagining this. He must be. Maybe he is concussed.

Tony straightens then, staring down at Steve with a fathomless expression. “Don’t get up,” he orders again, and then the suit latches back onto his body with a series of heavy clunks before he speeds back into the fray.

Steve passes out.

 

 

It takes days for his bones to knit themselves back together.

Steve doesn’t know what to make of the situation. Tony isn’t his first kiss by any stretch, but this is the first time he has been kissed outside of the codes of conduct. And it’s _Tony_. The thought bewilders him, although not in an altogether unpleasant way; the fluttering in his stomach, he knows, has nothing to with his injuries. It's been a while since his relationship with Tony has eased into friendship, time and proximity tempering their dissimilarities. The others crack jokes all the time about how they quibble like an old married couple. It isn’t as though the thought hasn’t crossed his mind before, it’s just—codes of conduct. They haven’t even gone on a first date.

To complicate matters, the first thing Tony does when they get back is assign two robots to Steve-duty before disappearing into his lab for the rest of the day. This ends up basically meaning that Steve has two robots flanking him at all times, ready to bring him what he needs so he doesn’t have to walk long distances. It's kind of nice for a time—Steve has them fetch him some painting supplies and reading materials, and they bring him as much food as he wants.

Before she leaves to report to Fury, Natasha forces Steve down onto the couch and tells him in no uncertain terms that he is not to leave the compound. Steve isn’t a child. He doesn’t know why Natasha spends so much time informing him exactly what she will do to him if she catches him exerting unnecessary amounts of force instead of recovering.

 

 

The next day, Tony sits with Steve at the kitchen table and is more reticent than usual while he unwraps take-out for both of them. It is habit now, how Tony splits the food into quarters and keeps one portion for himself while pushing the rest onto a platter for Steve. Tony pauses, looks at Steve’s sling, then cuts his steak for him without asking. Steve feels himself soften, a curl of fondness blooming in his sternum.

The others are conspicuously absent from the compound; the familiar flutter in the base of Steve's stomach confirms that they are alone.

When Tony passes him the plate, Steve thanks him and starts eating, keeping an eye on how Tony keeps moving his asparagus around the plate without really eating. There is an unusual slant to his jaw, like he’s holding it tight.

“Are we going to talk about it?”

The question escapes Steve’s mouth before he can really think about it. Tony pushes his asparagus into his potatoes.

“About what?”

“You know what,” he says, gently.

Tony takes a bite of his dinner, chews for a long time. Steve puts down his fork. He can be patient. Tony keeps looking at him with that penetrating expression. The bruise on his cheek is already fading out into a vivid yellow; Steve wonders if it is hurting him.

“I read some articles the other day about occupational hazards,” Tony says, after a while. “Did you know that there is, on average, a seven year gap in life expectancy between blue-collar and white-collar workers?”

Steve doesn’t know what he was expecting Tony to say, but it isn’t this.

“Loggers and fishermen have a thirty-fold increased probability of dying while on the job,” he continues, distractedly swirling his straw into his drink. “Players in the NFL have an average life expectancy of 54 years. Truck drivers have it a little better. They get to be around 61.”

“Tony,” Steve says quietly. He thinks about how Tony used to be a businessman before he was Iron Man, and wonders if he regrets. He knows where this is going, can hear it in the forced wall of calm Tony presents.

“Where do you think we land on that spectrum, Cap?”

Tony is made of angles, fine and edged. When he lifts his head to look up at Steve, his gaze pins Steve like it’s made of knife points. Steve begins to ache a little.

“Tony,” he says again. He wants to reach out and fix the piece of hair that keeps falling over Tony’s forehead. He doesn’t move.

“We’ve just—had a lot of close ones lately.” Tony says. “I don’t know. Yesterday was a near thing.”

Tony goes tight-lipped after this. His fingers clench around his cup, white with tension. Steve raises his line of vision to hold Tony's and sees, for the first time there, a thread of distress. _Tony is afraid of death._ The realization bubbles to the surface of Steve’s thoughts, easy, obvious now he can put a name to it.

There is a brief silence, and then Tony’s voice is low and grumbly when he starts muttering things like “wasting time” and “don’t know what we’re waiting for” in an undertone that Steve barely catches. Steve realizes with some distant astonishment that this is what Tony Stark sounds like when he’s embarrassed; when it hits him, he has to fight the strange urge to reach out and hold Tony's still-curled hand around the drink _now_. His stomach flips as he replays those words in his head: _don't know what we're waiting for._

“I don't know,” Tony finishes, scowling and a little flushed. "Are you going to make me say it?"

Tony isn’t fiddling with his tablet or dictating emails into his phone; he isn’t tinkering with a piece of tech. He is looking straight at Steve, eyes sharp and luminous. He is frenetic, larger than life. He's beautiful.

“No,” Steve says, heart jumping a little at the look on Tony’s face and settling somewhere around his throat. “I won’t make you say it.”

 

 

The second time Tony kisses Steve, Steve is ready for it.

Tony leans over the table and presses his mouth to the corner of Steve's lips, insistent and steady until Steve turns into the kiss. Steve's ribcage feels too tight for his suddenly hammering heart; Tony tastes like salt and inevitability. When Steve closes his eyes, Tony's hand settles behind his neck and he feels steady and solid and real, like something Steve could fall into.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

To the untrained eye, not much changes about their relationship after that. Steve and Tony continue to live in the same place. They continue to go on missions. They spar, root for opposing sports teams, take meals with the group or alone; yet everything has changed, and Steve feels all the time now a continual, fraying ache that unspools only when Tony gives him a small smile or lets his fingers linger over-long when he passes him the remote control.

One day, Steve realizes that it has become his new favorite thing to watch Tony.

Tony’s hands are calloused and skillful when they grip tools and mugs and Steve’s hand. When his hair isn’t styled up, it curls a little against his forehead and makes him look a decade younger.

Tony kisses him and it hollows him out with need. The earth shrinks to heat-hands-mouths-Tony and when Tony releases him, Steve feels like he might literally be reeling.

Steve learns that there are such things as whole-body smiles because of the way the sharp angles of Tony’s body blur a little when he grins, and feels his knees threaten to buckle because of it. Sometimes Tony looks back and there is a sly smile lingering in his eyes, like he knows the effect he has on Steve.

When Tony idly places a hand in his hair as they watch the news, Steve shivers with pleasure and doesn’t know how he could have gone on all this time without the feeling of Tony’s hand in his hair, easy and natural as it sifts through the strands like he’s taking inventory of what belongs to him.

 

 

Tony is more perceptive than the general public gives him credit for being.

Steve finds himself unusually wary in the early days of Tony's courtship, can’t shake off the feeling of it until he realizes that it’s because he is expecting Tony to erect some enormous monument in his honor in the middle of Central Park, or deploy all of his suits to announce their new relationship in skywriting, or buy the Yankees and parade them past the living room for Steve’s enjoyment.

Being in the limelight is what Tony does, so Steve braces and waits for the fanfare.

The explosion of media doesn’t happen. Steve goes through various phases of being watchful, then skeptical, then suspicious, then finally touched when it becomes clear that Tony doesn’t have any immediate plans to assault him with grand, sweeping declarations of affection. Steve wonders what’s gotten into him when two whole weeks pass without Tony showering him with expensive gifts and flower arrangements like he probably longs to do.

Steve wakes up one morning around four a.m. to the smell of breakfast and walks into the kitchen to find Tony on the kitchen counter, typing away at a tablet while a machine that looks vaguely like one of the robots from Star Wars zips around the kitchen wielding a salt shaker and a spatula like weapons. It is altogether unexpected: Tony has been known to wake up around noon if left undisturbed.

“Cap,” Tony says, without turning around, “how do you like your eggs? I’m testing out the culinary programming I installed into this bot yesterday.”

“You’re up early,” Steve says, smiling. “Sunny side up.”

“Sunny side up,” Tony repeats, typing into his tablet with a frown of concentration.

“Did you build this robot for the sole purpose of food preparation?” Steve asks. “You don’t think that’s maybe a waste of resources?”

“Pepper used to like it when she woke up to breakfast,” Tony says, shrugging. “You wake up too early and I’m not really interested in getting up at the crack of dawn every day, so.”

For a moment, Steve can’t speak. This is a habit of Tony’s—saying things like this off-hand like it’s no big deal when it in fact makes the shiver of affection in the pit of Steve’s sternum blaze into something sharp and hot that lodges in his throat. Tony isn’t even looking at Steve. He’s peering at the robot and muttering something about programming a waffle protocol.

Steve has never met anyone who is at once so endearing and exasperating.

Steve is in love.

 

  

The rest of the team seems to clue in almost instantaneously.

Steve can tell that they’re trying not to make a big fuss about it, but he can’t help but notice that he’s been getting more claps on the shoulder than he used to and that Rhodes has been noticeably chillier to him as of late. Natasha looks like she’s torn between being concerned and being happy for them, and Thor pulls Steve aside after movie night to declare his congratulations. Sam hands him a copy of Dating for Dummies with a pained expression on his face. Clint just winks a lot.

And Tony—

Tony eats it all up. Discretion flies out the window and Steve doesn’t know what to do about it. Tony waggles his eyebrows at Steve during group debrief, makes a show of touching his ass on his way to the dinner table. One time, Tony winds his arm around Steve and sucks a kiss to the space behind his ear right in front of Fury.

“Can we talk?” he finally says to Tony, pulling him into the gym one day when he can’t shake it off anymore.

“Mm,” Tony hums, slipping his phone into his pocket and grinning up at Steve (Steve has gotten into the habit of refusing conversation until Tony puts away his tech, to some success). “What’s up, Cap?”

Steve takes a deep breath, feeling a knot begin to gather in his stomach despite himself.

“This—these public displays of affection,” Steve says, all in one breath. “They’re kind of… a lot.”

Steve looks away from Tony. “You’re important to me, Tony,” he says. “And it’s fine that people know. It really is. It’s just… a lot.”

Another deep breath.

“My privacy is important to me too,” he finishes, feeling uncertain and small.

When he looks up, he’s expecting Tony to be rolling his eyes or starting at him with that singularly displeased scowl he uses when he thinks someone is being an idiot, but Tony just tilts his head and looks a little upset, thoughtful. There is a long silence in which Steve feels like the biggest jerk on the planet.

Then—

“Sorry, Cap,” says Tony, quiet. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” he says. When Steve reaches out to him, Tony doesn’t pull away. “It's fine. We’ll figure it out together.”

 

 

Steve remembers the first time he was introduced to Tony—how he recoiled instantly from the loudness and histrionics that so delineated Tony Stark. It had been instinct, self-preservation.

Steve hadn't known what to make of the mercurial man called Stark, who was at best a well-meaning maverick and at worst a self-important asshole. He had stayed out of his way when he could and talked to Natasha instead, who was just as inscrutable but smiled at him softly and explained what Wi Fi meant when he asked instead of barking a sharp laugh and launching into the history of the Internet.

He remembers striding off to his room after arguments, hot and angry and wondering through gritted teeth why Tony couldn't just be less cavalier, more guileless, why he couldn't just say what he meant, why spending time with Tony had to mean casting himself into a thunderclap of disorientation.

 

  

Now, Tony watches Steve with a strange directness that pulls at Steve as a mooring line tethers a boat in still waters.

He has never understood anyone like this, he thinks to himself one day. He may never again.

When Tony is angry, his mouth sharpens like the edge of a knife and his words land like acid. When he is pleased, Steve can see it in the shifting curve of his nape and the way his hands ease to a standstill.

Fear is something different still. In the early morning, Tony touches Steve like he’s checking to make sure he’s still there and Steve can read the ebbing uneasiness in his collarbones, can feel it in the dip of his hipbones.

They don’t need words, for this.

After a mission ends in casualties, Tony walks into Steve’s room and his face is a stormcloud. Steve closes his book and looks at him. Tony moves across the room like he doesn’t know he’s doing it and sits next to Steve on his bed, pressing himself against the long line of Steve’s body. When Tony turns his face into the swoop of Steve’s waiting palm, Steve feels like he’s going to fracture apart with love.

 

 

“Call me Steve,” he says one day.

“Steve,” Tony repeats, and the sound of his name in Tony’s mouth unravels Steve, makes him ache and ache.

 

 

Steve hasn’t told this to anyone, but when he was with Peggy he spent a lot of time worrying about embracing her too hard or squeezing her small, pale hand too tight. Back then, he was still growing into his new body and for all her stubborn strength, the Peggy Carter of his memories was a wisp of a thing.

In comparison, Tony is reassuringly sturdy, all lean muscle and strong, clean lines. He drags Steve’s impressive body weight into empty corridors; he presses Steve against the wall with a single strong and solid arm, leaning in to slide their mouths together. He is demanding, assertive, tenacious.

Tony’s touch sears Steve to the bone and Steve realizes he would burn on an altar for love; this feeling right here, he will live and die for it.

 

 

 “You are essential,” Tony says once to Steve in the late evening, and his eyes are wide and frank when he says it.

Steve recognizes the declaration for what it is and smiles. He gestures and Tony comes to him, fitting seamless and easy like he is made for it.

The paper-thin skin around Tony’s eyes crinkles with pleasure and maybe a question, too; Steve’s body quivers in a long, continual _yes_.

 

 


End file.
